In January, Stanford launched Digging Deeper: Making Manuscripts, an online learning experience devoted to the technologies involved in creating and interpreting medieval manuscripts. We're off to a roaring start with thousands of enrolled participants across more than 90 countries (and it's not too late to sign up!). The creation of the course has been a truly collaborative experience: Stanford University faculty and library staff have worked closely with counterparts at Cambridge University, Stanford Academic Technology Specialists, graduate students, and a team from Stanford's Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning to produce a suite of learning materials that have become much richer than any of us envisaged at the beginning of the process in 2013!

Do you have an older iPad that is just sitting around idle? Why not use it for something productive such as interactive front desk signage?

The Stanford Engineering Library continues to partner with Oalla, a student-run interactive digital signage project, in the planning and development of signage apps that are relevant to libraries. A new Oalla app has been designed specifically for use with iPads that allows instant patron feedback. We are using the app to gain feedback on what services and equipment are important to our library users. Other uses may include displaying events, advertising products or services, or way finding. Oalla is free, easy to use and can put your previous generation iPads to good use. An iPad stand such as the Ipevo Perch can be used to prevent your iPad from walking away.

Send an email to signup@oalla.com for a free account and set-up instructions. Contact Michael Nack (mnack@stanford.edu) if you have further questions.

Are Stanford students living in the clouds? Our recent Chromebook lending pilot at the Terman Engineering Library pointed out some interesting trends that involve the adoption of Google Apps and cloud computing/storage in general.

Oalla digital signage continues to innovate within the Stanford University Libraries. Since Ronnie Fields of the Stanford Green Library last posted on the topic, the Stanford Terman Engineering Library has been testing new Oalla apps created specifically for use with iPads, Android tablets and large touch screen monitors.

We've set up trial access for a new database called VoxGov (http://voxgov.com). Please take a moment to put the database through its paces and send any feedback you have to me at jrjacobs AT stanford DOT edu by April 8, 2014.

VoxGov has a powerful search and pulls together a large swath of US federal public domain government information with social media data and displays it in a visually understandable way. VoxGov also allows for bulk data access to faculty and graduate students who may need to do deeper data analysis. Bulk data access is via separate individual license and has some restrictions on use and reproduction.

Voxgov collects, organizes and archives primary sourced U.S. Federal Government information from government sites like fdsys.gov, federalregister.gov, congress.gov, and some executive agencies as well as major NGO sites like openCRS and FAS Project on Government Secrecy and combines that public domain information with 4,000 official federal government social media accounts from twitter and facebook, as well as speeches, press releases and content from over 10,000 Federal government web locations.

The Stanford Libraries has utilized digital signage for many years. We have always looked to move from the monotonous static systems of the past to a communicative system that was more dynamic and interactive. There are many digital signage solutions available on the market – both open source and commercial – that have the features and functionality for building a robust digital signage system, but none that offers the features and personal touch like Oalla.

The International Organization for Science and Technology Education (IOSTE) Eurasian Regional conference was recently held in Antalya, Turkey. The organization’s goal is to advance science and technology education as well as to provide scholarly exchange and discussion on this subject. Participants were interested in learning from experiences gained from using Tablets and Mobiles in teaching and learning here at Stanford. The recent "iPads For Learning Pilot" provided most of the content that was presented in the workshop on Tablets in Science and Technology education. This workshop also resulted in invitations to visit and speak with educators in other schools and colleges, leading to a trip to Ankara where an event with over 70 teachers was organized at Maya Schools - a private school and college.

A month ago on October 24th (computer geeks know this number 1024 as 2^10), staff and friends of the Internet Archive (IA) converged at archive.org's 300 Funston Avenue offices for an annual celebration of their mission to provide access to a free, safe and open internet. IA's founder, Brewster Kahle, spoke of recent milestones such as the growth of the data set to 15 Petabytes up from just a few last year, and the launch of the TV News archive. Other highlights included the new (and largest collection) of vintage software; eliminating the 404 Error from browsers; improvements on the WayBack Machine; an expanded emulator - MESS; and the growing size of their hard copy collection arising from individual donations. Let us explore a few of these.

TV News

This service enables users to search TV news for phrases found in past broadcasts. One can quote, save, and even share search results. IA will be receiving a donation of 140,000 tapes containing 35 years of TV history, and dating back to the 1970s. This is the Marion Stokes collection of TV news.